I have a friend at my highschool that claims to be a hacker. He has some interesting things to say including that "Windows is based on UNIX and therefore Command Prompt is totally compatible with BASH". Now, he has done some intesting things so far, at one point he wrote a program in Java that deleted random files off school computers. Is he really a hacker? I know this isn't a lot of info, but it seems he should know his stuff if he is.

Don't know about the full extent of his skills, but I can tell you this:

He is a cracker! Doing that on school computers is dumb. Stay away.

Always remember that you are the decisions you make. If you decide to associate with him, you will be lumped into his category. This simple connection to him can get you in trouble, too, if it hasn't already.

Or is it the other way around? Is his association with you the problem?

He got expeled last year due to his exploits. He is wanting my help to have the "greatest senior prank ever" and crash the school mainframe at the end of this year. Obviously he hasn't looked much the network...it links the the Department of Education, they'd trace him in a minute. He doesn't use Linux much, but he got his hands on a copy of Protech Beta, which scares me...

Yah, the problem is, there is a lot I could learn from him programming wise. I want to avoid him due to his radical definition of fun, but he also has some good knowledge. Problem is, admins freak when they see the only two computer literate kids in the school, both accused of hacking, walking down the hallway side-by-side talking in a language no one else understands.

You have to ask yourself, is it worth getting kicked out of school (or worse) in order to learn programming that you could teach yourself for free? I don't know how good he is at programming, but he may not even be that great at it. Not all programming is created equal either - sounds like he uses mostly Java (which I have never used, so take this with a grain of salt), but for security you probably want to learn C and assembly instead.

If you're looking to learn how to program, I'd say just hop on Google and go to howstuffworks.com - they have some great introductory computer articles, including programming. Or stick around here, there should be some Programming 101 articles coming up in a few weeks.

In any case, I wouldn't get involved, it's not worth it. Remember, you'd be screwing up the system that (probably) holds all the proof that you've passed your classes. :\

I think I will stay away from him, I do however, now realize how easy it is to become a black hat. The networks sit there with hundreds of holes that the admins don't know about. It's like they just hope it keeps running. And I have never, ever gotten into trouble for anything in school-every year. It gets boring sometimes. I also know that to crash a school network, I wouldn't be dealing with just cops...

heffnercj wrote:If you're looking to learn how to program, I'd say just hop on Google and go to howstuffworks.com - they have some great introductory computer articles, including programming. Or stick around here, there should be some Programming 101 articles coming up in a few weeks.

Thanks for the tip I have been trying to find some dumby friendly sites as my wushu is not as good as I would like it to be.

"A man who finds no satisfaction in himself will seek for it in vain elsewhere."

Kevan wrote:Yah, the problem is, there is a lot I could learn from him programming wise.

I've found over the years that the people who try to awe you with their technical ability are often full of crap if you pardon the expression. If this guy thinks that DOS batch scripts are in any way related to shell scripting then he's probably not the person you should be learning from. He sounds to me like a pretender and

Have confidence in your own ability and don't think you need guys like this to learn. I've been impressed by people's ability in the past only to find that they haven't done half of what they claim and I know much more than they did about computers.

I understand the need to be around other people who speak the same language as you. I'd look to other places such as your local Unix/Linux user group or one of the chat rooms in irc.freenode.net. You'll get a lot more out of talking to people like that than your angst ridden friend.

You could also try W3 Schools which will teach you about HTML, XML, Browser scripting and Server scripting. You'll find that site very helpful if you're working your way through the challenges at www.hellboundhackers.org.

BTW, heffnercj has summed it up pretty well - you don't need this guy to study from, as there are many free resources available.

CEH, CCSA NG/AI, NNCSS, MCP, MCSA 2003

There are 10 kinds of people, those that understand binary, and those that don't.

The HTML is very common ground for me, I have training as a webdesigner in Dreamweaver as well as HTML. I was first taught HTML, then used Dreamweaver, tweaking the Dreamweaver projects with code. I am lucky I got it, and it seems very simple to me. I can read Javascript, but am not familar with writing it.